Digitizing operational checklists on the factory floor

Context

The company — a regional leader in mining and ore processing — runs three shifts with more than 200 operators spread across the production line, maintenance and internal logistics. Each shift required filling out safety, environmental compliance and operational quality checklists, printed on A4 paper and handed to the supervisor at the end of the shift.

Internal and external audits (ISO 14001, NR-22) demanded quick access to any checklist from the last 12 months. The cost of organizing, digitizing and storing this volume exceeded 40 hours/month of administrative work — and even so, 3 to 5 checklists went missing each month.

Challenge

The operations director’s initial request was to "cut the paper". In practice, the real scope involved four interconnected problems:

1. Capture: operators needed to fill out the checklist in an area without stable Wi-Fi, with a digital signature and the ability to attach a photo of the equipment.
2. Approval: the supervisor had to validate in real time and escalate to the manager whenever a non-conformity arose.
3. Audit: quick lookup by operator, shift, period or equipment — without having to open 300 PDF files.
4. Integration: the data had to feed the company’s existing corporate Power BI, without duplicating the source.

The critical constraint was the deadline: the next ISO audit was scheduled for 45 days after kickoff. Missing that deadline meant renewing the paper-based contingency for another quarter.

Solution

We delivered a solution of three integrated layers, leveraging the Microsoft 365 licenses the company already had — zero additional licensing cost.

Capture layer — Power Apps Canvas

A mobile-first app with a dynamic form (14 critical items + 22 optional ones per equipment type), offline support via SaveData/LoadData, native camera and digital signature. The app is installed on Android tablets already present on the factory floor; submission happens when the tablet finds a signal.

Orchestration layer — Power Automate

The main flow performs three tasks: it persists the checklist in SharePoint with metadata, triggers automatic approval to the shift supervisor via Teams (with a native Approve/Reject button) and escalates to the manager when there is a non-conformity item flagged as "critical". Error handling on every critical action + logging in a dedicated list for auditing the flow itself.

Persistence layer — SharePoint

A corporate list with retention configured for 5 years, permissions by security group, calculated columns for fast indexing and native connection to the existing Power BI via Dataflow. Auditors can search across 7 combined filters in under 2 seconds.

"The first time I opened the dashboard and could see the checklist from shift A, line 3, from last week in 30 seconds — that was when I realized the project had been worth every cent."
— Operations Director

Stack used

• Power Apps Canvas
• Power Automate Cloud Flows
• SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Teams (approvals)
• Power BI (consumption)
• Azure Active Directory (SSO)

Verified results

We measured a baseline in the two weeks prior to rollout and reassessed after 30 days in production.

• -65%Average shift closing time: from 42 min to 15 min.
• ZeroChecklists lost in the 1st month (before: 3-5/month).
• -80%Lookup time during audits: from ~15 min/record to ~2 min.
• -40h/monthAdministrative hours freed up for higher-value tasks.
• 100%End-to-end traceability required by ISO 14001.
• R$ 0Additional licensing cost — Microsoft 365 already covered.